The Summer of the Jellyfish, A summer vacation turned nightmarish when a jellyfish sting left me with severe pain and a sea of welts.
In the summer of my youth, we vacationed in Tennessee, a stark contrast to my Gulf Coast home where I swam in the ocean year-round. This time, we visited a small creek, and as I explored, I stepped into a deep crater and sank beneath the water’s surface. Panic overwhelmed me as my lungs filled with water, and the struggle to escape turned into a desperate resignation. Overcome by exhaustion and a strange calm, I succumbed to the watery embrace, surrendering to what I thought might be my end.
Just as I felt myself slipping away, I was jolted awake by a gripping sensation around my body, pulling me from the depths. I surfaced, gasping for air, only to be faced with the terrifying realization that something had wrapped around me in the water. My initial fear was that I had been attacked by a predator. I stumbled and screamed to my boyfriend for help, convinced that my back had been ripped apart by a shark. As he reached me, he reassured me that I was intact, but the pain was excruciating. I collapsed on the sand, trembling uncontrollably as the searing pain radiated through every nerve.
The agony was far from over. My family and bystanders, desperate to alleviate my suffering, suggested using urine to neutralize the stings from a jellyfish or sea nettle. Despite the absurdity of the situation, no one was willing to help. To make matters worse, my body was covered in thousands of fine, painful stingers. A nurse eventually advised me to return to the water and endure the excruciating process of scraping the stingers off with credit cards. Every scrape felt like layers of skin being peeled away, leaving me with red, swollen welts that marked my body with painful reminders of the ordeal. The relief was minimal, but it was enough to know I had survived the ordeal—barely.
